


The Path To Ruin Is Paved In Gold

by ShadeOfAzmeinya



Category: Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter/Funhaus RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Grand Theft Auto Setting, Backstory, Fake AH Crew, Second person POV, poetry style
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-24
Updated: 2017-05-24
Packaged: 2018-11-04 13:47:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,007
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10992171
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShadeOfAzmeinya/pseuds/ShadeOfAzmeinya
Summary: You fall in love with gold when you’re six years old and you steal your first watch.





	The Path To Ruin Is Paved In Gold

**Author's Note:**

> Was feeling poetic lately so decided to whip this one up! Mostly because I love our Golden Boy.

You fall in love with gold when you’re six years old and you steal your first watch. You take it off a corpse you found on the riverside. Your friend Dan and you were running, playing when you spotted it motionless, pulled half out of the water. You are the one brave enough to poke it. Dan complains loudly, not noticing you swiping the watch from the stiff, swollen arm.

Your mother gives you strange looks when you explain what happened. You think it looks like fear, but you don’t understand. “Why are you scared of me?” you ask, in a small, confused voice. She does not answer, just kisses your head and tells you to go to bed.

Your next piece of gold you get when you’re thirteen. You take it from a pawnshop as your mother tries to pawn her wedding ring. You need money to eat that week. You pocket the ring, not showing it off this time. You sell it to the pawnshop across town so you can eat next week too.

It didn’t matter in the end because your mother dies in the following month and you’re shipped off to live with your grandfather. He doesn’t like you much but at least he’s rich. You don’t have to worry about food anymore. You start stealing his gold instead. He never notices.

You learn to work computers at fourteen. You’ve never had your own, but your grandfather gives one to you to keep you away from him. You don’t care, immersing yourself in a world you’ve never had access to before. And you learn. You learn quick and fast, learning soon just how much danger a few keystrokes of yours can cause.

You suppose a better kid would never touch the criminal underworld. You suppose an ordinary kid would look at it than leave. But you. You dive in headfirst, no looking back. You never cared for normalcy anyway. Not when you can see the numbers fly, watch the money in your fake account go up and up and up. You’re wanted as a hacker, needed. You get a thrill from it all. The same thrill when you held the first shinny piece of gold in your hand, watching the hands tick and tock, watching the lines of code flicker across the screen.

You get noticed too much, though. You’re still learning, still clumsy. You nearly take a gun to the heart, only surviving from quick reflexes and your friend Dan being by your side. It takes three shots from Dan’s gun to get them to stop moving. It’s the first time either of you kill. You steal the wallet off the corpse. Dan complains.

You’re seventeen when you buy a plane ticket to America. England wasn’t safe and frankly, you’re bored. You buy it from money from a stolen necklace. The night before you leave you sneak out to see Dan. You’ve tried to convince him to go with you, but he had too much he still needed to do here.

You lay together on the roof of his home, staring into the night. Dan admits that he’s scared. That he’s scared for you. That he’s scared _of_ you. You just promise him you’ll be safe. You don’t ask why he’s scared of you. He knows all the hazardous potential you hold. He’s always said you’re much too smart for your own good.

You don’t leave a note for your grandfather when you leave. You just gather everything you own in a small suitcase and hop onto a plane. You think your grandfather was relieved. There were no missing persons reports.

You build yourself in America. You start making an image, starting from scratch now that you’re new. You assemble a mask from stolen gold and duct tape and scraps. You better your skills, you sharped your tongue. You find the flashiest sunglasses to make better bluffs. You wear the gaudiest, most expensive looking clothes to seem rich. You spin an air of cockiness, finding people attracted to the act. You survive on stolen wallets and stolen hearts, crafting a smile that seems sweet and sharp and pretty and perilous and full of so many empty promises. And it all works. You get noticed. You get work. You get richer, you get _better_.

You find out Dan joined the army a year later, just like he always talked of doing. You hear this as you sit in a shitty, rundown apartment, hunching over the laptop to start a new job. You suppose you should feel happy for him. You only feel bitter instead.

At first you learn it’s best to work alone. Groups are dangerous, trust can be twisted. People think little of you anyway, not that you care. Let them not realize the danger under your fingertips, the fire in your eyes, the edge in your smirk. If they underestimate you, all the less work for you. All that much easier to rip their riches out from under their nose. 

You swore to work alone until you meet a man with a lazy smile and a loud laugh. You met in a bar, surrounded by alcohol and rambunctious swearing, the way most meetings seem to go in this underworld. You were stealing wallets to eat next week and giving flirting smiles to find work next week. He offers you a drink and you offer him some time and you find he’s a lot like you. Smarter than he looks, eyes sharper than they look. He is the first to not underestimate you.

The handshake you share at the end of the night is one of promise, one of potential. You can tell he’s going to go far and you want in. You had to sell your last gold watch and the next one you’d like to keep, you explain to him. He laughs and gives you a phone number to call the next day. You share a smile of chaotic fortune and you know. This is where you’re meant to be.

**Author's Note:**

> Say hi on my[ tumblr](http://shadeofazmeinya.tumblr.com/)!


End file.
